Sydney artist, Nigel Milsom, has won the AUD150,000 acquisitive Doug Moran National Portrait Prize—now in its 25th year—from behind bars. Milsom’s works channel the condition of loneliness or the singularity of the human experience—a sensation that may be all too familiar for the artist, who is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for robbery and assault he committed while on a drug binge in 2012.

Outlining his vision for the future of Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Chris Saines, the museum’s director appointed six months ago, said he was ready “to set a new course for the gallery” in an effort to make it the world’s “leading museum for the contemporary art of Australia, Asia and the Pacific.” He then proceeded to outline some exciting prospects –namely, landmark exhibitions by living international artists, a shift in curatorial focus for the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT) and general gallery restructuring—that future visitors to the museum can anticipate.

German-born Ute Meta Bauer has been appointed as founding director of the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Nanyang Technological University’s national research center, which opened in Singapore’s Gillman Barracks on October 23, coinciding with the 4th edition of the Singapore Biennale. In her commencement speech, Bauer outlined plans for the CCA, which is supported by Singapore’s Economic Development Board, to operate as a local hub with an international perspective, with the overall aim to “shape and profile a new institution that embraces academic scholarship and research with art as knowledge production in its own right.”

Last week, West Kowloon’s new museum for visual culture M+ welcomed Lesley Ma as its new ink art curator. Ma, who took up the new position on October 8, will serve part-time in developing exhibitions and building the museum’s ink art collection and public programming.